Nabokov about Chekhov: His dictionary is poor, his combination of words almost trivial…He was not a verbal inventor in the sense that Gogol was; his literary style goes to parties clad in its everyday suit. Thus Chekhov is a good example to give when one tries to explain that a writer may be a perfect artist without being exceptionally vivid in his verbal technique or exceptionally preoccupied with the way his sentences curve… The magical part of it is that…Chekhov managed to convey an impression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich beautiful prose was. He did it by keeping all his words in the same dim light and of the same exact tint of gray, a tint between the color of an old fence and that of a low cloud. The variety of his moods, the flicker of his charming wit, the deeply artistic economy of characterization, the vivid detail, and the fade-out of human life - all the peculiar Chekhovian features - are enhanced by being suffused and surrounded by a faintly iridescent verbal haziness. From Lectures on Russian Literature
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 20:49:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015